Will AI Ever Have Common Sense?

The Joy of Why

Steven Strogatz, Janna Levin and Quanta Magazine

Science, Life Sciences

4.9 • 577 Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2024

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Common sense rules our world. This fundamental, sometimes trivial knowledge is inherent to how humans interpret language. Yet, some of these simple human truths are so obvious that they're rarely put into words. And without the data of common sense to train on, large language models such as ChatGPT have bizarre, often humorous blind spots.

Yejin Choi, professor and the chair of computer science at the University of Washington, calls common sense the “dark matter” of intelligence. In this week’s episode of “The Joy of Why,” Choi talks with co-host Steven Strogatz about decoding the interstitial glue of language and comprehension. Together, they explore the question: Should we program more humanity into the next generation of artificial intelligence?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Going back to at least the 1960s,
0:12.0	computer scientists have been dreaming about brain-inspired computers
0:16.0	that might someday demonstrate human-like intelligence.
0:20.0	With the rise of the internet, the availability of
0:22.6	enormous textual data sets, and impressive advances in computational power, we've reached a momentous
0:29.6	point. Large language models, or LLMs, can often seem to wield something close to human
0:36.6	intelligence, at least to us non-experts.
0:40.3	And the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2022 helped these LLMs make their mark in the headlines,
0:47.3	in the workplace, and in dinner table conversations.
0:51.3	But there's still a telltale sign that large language model intelligence
0:55.8	is truly artificial. Their lack of common sense, which can emerge in spectacular and
1:02.2	sometimes hilarious ways in the mistakes they make. I'm Steve Strogetts and this is the
1:07.4	Joy of Why, a podcast from Quantum Magazine where I take turns at the mic with my co-host, Jan 11, exploring some of the biggest questions in math and science today.
1:18.2	In this episode, we're going to be speaking to computer scientist Jejin Choi about the architecture and capabilities of large language models, and speculate about whether artificial intelligence, AI, will ever gain common sense.
1:33.3	Yeachin Choi is a professor and the chair of computer science at the University of Washington, where she researches statistical approaches and computational models for natural language processing. She was recognized as a
1:46.3	2022 MacArthur Fellow and named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in AI in
1:53.7	2023. Yay Jen, thanks so much for joining us here on The Joy of Why. Thank you for having me.
2:00.1	I'm excited to be here.
2:01.5	Great. Well, this is going to be so much fun. I'm so fascinated as I know so many people are
2:06.7	by what's going on these days in AI. And so while I was preparing for this chat, just as a little bit of a joke, I was curious.
2:15.4	I asked chatGPT, a chatbot built on one of these large
2:19.5	language models. Do you understand? And it replied, as an AI, I don't possess consciousness or
	...

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